Everybody Wang-chung Tonight

As we watch the nightcap, we will be able to rest easy knowing that the Yankees do indeed have an ace at the top of their rotation and by good fortune he happens to be the youngest hurler in it. Not only did Wang tie Halladay for the major league lead in wins today, moving his record to 16-5, he did exactly what you need your stopper, and make no mistake he is the stopper, of your staff to do. Coming off a bad road trip, in which the game he started was the only convincing win they had, in which a badly overworked and somewhat overrated bullpen began to implode, in which they had long strings of uninspired plate appearances, Wang pitched shutout baseball for 7 2/3, with almost no run support, his back to the wall, throughout, and spared Proctor form serious work, the rest of the bullpen from any work, and allowed Mo a routine 1 inning save.

Being a stopper for a contending team is more difficult and nore praiseworthy than being a stopper, a la Halladay, for an also-ran. Once the losing streaks stop meaning anything who really cares if they are stopped. Stopping for the Jays is a low pressure assignment. Wtih that in mind, on wonders why Wang and not Halladay is not invoked as Johan Santana's main competition for the Cy young (now that injuries have stalled Loriano's chances). I have just listened to 3 of ESPN's prime wankers argue of whether Jeter should be running strong in the MVP race, and 2 of them agreed he was only ahead because of the pinstripe effect or the NY effect or both. If that is the case, why doesn't Wang benefit from the NY context, at least to the point he gets the recognition he deserves?

The Jeter gas er gabfest may hold the answer. The 2 idiots who dismissed Jeter as a viable candidate for MVP kept repeating the phrase, he only has 12 homers, 12 homers, only 12 homers, with increasing incredulity, and were completely undeterred in their descent into silliness by the observation that he would have over 100 RBI's out of the 2 hole, let alone the 34o0 BA, the 200+ hits, the 415 OBP, the 26 steals, or another fine fielding season at a key position. The point is they were fixated on the bomb, as if this was a silver slugger award, an MVB (most valuable Bopper), rather than an MVP. This same brace of clowns were until a a week ago were all hot on Ortiz being the MVP, even though the last time I checked he doesn't even play the game of baseball, he just bops--not only does he do nothing but play offense, he doesn't hit for average, can't run the bases etc. All of this leads me to specualte that a widespread disrespect for the non-power game among postion players might translate into a similar phenomenon among pitchers. Given a choice among relatively accomplished pitchers, today's scribes will go for the one that strikes out alot of people. And that clearly is not Wang. In all of this I am not arguing that Wang should win the Cy Young or even that he should be ranked ahead of Papelbon, who also isn't getting alot of discussion owing to the same anti-reliever bias that has cost Mo his chances. But Wang, like Papelbo, should be in the discussion, before Halladay, before Loriano, certainly before Fat Man Bleeding, and before Verlander.


One other thing. If you look at the box score today you will notice that a recently frequent phenomenon occurred yet again. Jeter had a mutiple hit game and was accompanied in theis feat by Robby Cano. so here's my admonition. Slow Joe must find a way of batting these guys next to one anothe rto maximize the value of their production. Cano might bat third with Abreu 4th and Giambi 5th for example, especially since we all agree that AROD should be banished from the heart of the order, a consensus validated once again by his performance at the plate today. If Damon was backed up by Jeter, Cano and Abreu, I think we'd see more runs.